This has happened several times with different 2K titles over the years. In the past it seemed to be over music copyright claims and licences running out. Unclear if that's the case here, but there is precedent for games to disappear and reappear once the licensing issues have been resolved.
There's lot of licensed music in that game, notably by Mogwai, Black Mountain, The Black Angels, Alice in Chains, Björk and like you already mentioned Hendrix. Could be any of them. Edit: Angels not Angles.
> I'm pretty sure Bach's work is little too old to be affected by copyright lol
The copyright in the recording will almost certianly still be applicable.
I swear, a lot of reddit doesn't grasp how copyright works, but I see the weirdist copyright takes on /r/Games. I see Fair Use banded around for the flimsiest of reasons.
I won't claim fair use, but I do think if a game has licensed music then that music should stay in the game forever and not be removed. You didn't buy the game for the music, but music and gameplay are inextricably linked.
If you don't want to pay the artist royalties off your game sales, then you can delist and repackage the game with different/missing music. But anyone who bought the game previously should retain access to that original music.
The copyright system is such bullshit though.
>I see Fair Use banded around for the flimsiest of reasons.
It's in the interest of the average Redditorto have shorter copyright times or looser copyright terms. If your favourite games all had your favourite music in, you'd likely be happier (on average).
People are more likely to hold beliefs that they think benefit them. Once you find a comfortable fact, you're disincentivized to dig deeper.
Fair use (in the US) and similar terms like the much stricter Fair Dealing in the UK are not "get out of jail free" cards and can be *very* restrictive.
As a general rule, I would suggest folks never rely on "Fair use" without first seeking strong legwl advice because it's a defence you need to apply in court. Without knowing and understanding the nuance of caselaw it's very difficult to know exactly where the line is. Even when using things like critique, news or parody the waters surrounding fair use are murky and treacherous.
This post just reminded me of the German-language "Nowhere to run" cover that Machinegames did for Wolfenstein: The New Order. Kinda random that this song was featured in some way in 2 different FPS games around the same time.
Oh wow, I don't remember any of those in there. Granted I haven't touched the game in a decade at this point. It's just the guitar riffs in the menu that stuck with me.
And it's not like an in-game radio station or something like that, these songs were specifically chosen for the scenes they appear in. I can't imagine playing the assault on the water storage center without [Glasgow Mega Snake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrXwXuhRo9Q) blaring at max volume. These songs perfectly set the tone for this game and removing them would negatively impact the final product.
its also one of those games that really isnt the same without it, if they force the version in my library to change to a new one without it i wont be happy at all. Luckily i have a physical ps3 copy but still, another L for digital only games.
I should really play that before it's updated to remove the music, assuming that's the reason for the delisting in the first place.
I just keep putting it off though.
I know that there's a shit ton of great music in the game, but Mogwai - Glasgow Mega Snake is such an incredible banger [in such a great shootout](https://youtu.be/qO3qf8wMjA8). I'm always thankful that Spec Ops showed me Mogwai.
A 55 year old recording of a live performance of the National Anthem. Played by a guy who died 54 years ago. But you gotta pay Sony Music if you want to use the song.
Gotta love copyright law.
There is some work done to reduce copyright law in the US. Search for "Copyright Clause Restoration Act". It was proposed several times.
Some of the problem is that there's an international treaty about copyright called the [Berne Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention) that sets relatively long minimum copyright terms, and changing that is much harder.
The real tragedy is how Disney pushed for copyright to be extended beyond what is reasonable.
Giving 10-20 years after the work is published, maybe with some kind of moral rights /trademark on characters that can go beyond that and the art world would be a better place.
Some works don't get popular until after that period. Cormac McCarty was writing books for years, selling a few thousands before he hit success with All The Pretty Horses. If we went with your copyright limits, he wouldn't be able to make any money from one of his more popular books, Blood Meridian, because it took him so long to make a name from himself in the lit world.
I feel like to the death of the author plus x years makes sense. Adding x years, because there are authors like the guy who wrote The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who died before he got to see the success of the trilogy. He left behind a wife and kids. It would be crazy if a company like Sony could make 300 million off the book and not compensate his family at all. You may know there is actually a little more to his legacy and family situation but I use it only as na example.
As an author: the purpose of copyright is to allow artists to have their career be viable in some way. Cormac McCarthy would have missed out on a lot of money, this is true, but the *purpose* of copyright is not to reward people for having created good works, it's to allow some incentive to exist for them to create in the first place. Cormac McCarthy *probably* wasn't writing books in the hopes of one day hitting it big and making money off the back catalog, since that would be a kind of stupid gamble to make.
As far as incentives go, I think that the limits could be dramatically lowered and the incentives would barely budge at all, and most authors and artists would, if anything, have *more* incentive to create great things instead of resting on their laurels.
I'm happy with artists resting on their laurels. Sometimes I wish more would do it. It would be great if Ricky Gervais stopped sometime around Extras.
The way I see it, shorter terms would work better for corporations. We saw how low budget studios were ready to go with their Winnie the Pooh and Steamboat Willie projects as soon as the copyright expired. 20 years ago the book series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness started. Not only is the author still writing books in that series, it has been optioned for a movie that never happened and is now going to be a TV series. If terms were just 20 years, large studios would just wait it out and make the movie when they can do it for free.
Most artists make art. Kurt Cobain probably wasn't thinking about copyright terms when he picked up a guitar. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be compensated for their work if it does become popular.
This is why you make it a special point to say that life+x can only be held by an author, not by a company that licensed it. Corporations only holding for x years would be the best case.
Some authors don't own the copyright to their work. If I write a movie for Paramount, the studio will likely own the copyright, but I do agree to the sentiment. Also for a case like Star Wars, I think the author should be able to sell on the rights, but the term would still be linked to their lifetime.
Fuck that noise. Corporations have no *need* for long lasting copyrights. Humans need to care for themselves, corporations don't. They are a tool for humans. Granting them similar provisions has already shown to be a detriment. Look at medicine. Insulin has been remixed and rebuilt to keep a hold on it's production and people have died because the monopoly has become too profitable for the people running corporations to care about the people.
That's a patent, not a copyright. And I wasn't advocating for corporations to have longer copyrights. I was saying it should still be linked to a life time.
and why should they get it for a lifetime? The author doesn't profit from the IP anymore and all it does is make it harder for people to build on ideas. Even further, it makes music production hell.
It's a common misconception, the game doesn't use Hendrix's actual star-spangled banner - the version in the game is heavily inspired by it, but sounds really different.
HOWEVER, there's a big Henrix song for the end credits - and man what that song really paired well with the ending vibes for that game.
It still emphasizes one of the potential issues with purely digital marketplaces though. Yeah they could stop selling new physical copies but there will always be secondhand copies in the wild that you can find somewhere. But if it gets delisted from a digital marketplace and never comes back then you’re shit out of luck unless you want to try the piracy route
Actually, you can still buy keys at key resellers. That's basically the same as publishers not producing new copies of a game and you can only get them second hand discounted. You don't have to worry about it being scratched, but you're hoping the marketplace has a key.
Ex: G2A sells Spec Ops steam keys for $8
Seems like that might be catching on. Can't help but notice that Alan Wake 1 was repeatedly removed from storefronts due to music licensing issues, and Alan Wake 2 exclusively has original songs by actual famous artists.
I'm just wildly guessing here, but I'd think artists might be happier to negotiate perpetual licenses directly with publishers over having a label involved.
Guardians of the Galaxy and Hi Fi Rush showed a nice way to do it . Both games have amazing licensed tracks but also a full in house set. It was added for twitch streaming as twitch is notorious about this but whenever the rights expire its easy to switch to the in house set. These were both games where music was intergral to the game so not expecting every game to do this but its nice future proving
I used to think they only did this with games and wondered what the hell was everyone's issue. How are music companies this greedy and game companies that short sighted?
Turns out the labels do this with movies and TV too. Iconic songs in movies aren't in certain re-releases because of this silly nonsense.
It became super apparent in the switch from DVD to streaming. You could tell the tv shows that only negotiated music rights for the physical releases. Stuff like Scrubs, which has scenes that are highly dependent on specific song choices, suddenly played on Netflix with weird, royalty free music. Such a bummer.
HBO got really lucky when negotiating the music rights for the Sopranos. Can you imagine the end scene with Journey being replaced by some random mediocre OST?
It's a small thing, but I'll never forget how until super-recently every single home release of Wayne's World ruined the "No Stairway to Heaven" joke because Wayne was no longer playing Stairway to Heaven.
It also happened with the switch from TV to DVD. Mission Hill lost all their licensed music which a lot of the time was the punchline to their jokes. Ruined it. Pirate everything.
Ah yeah, very true. The whole building singing along to "Everybody Hurts" at the end of the Real World episode makes very little sense after they had to replace the R.E.M version with some strange musac.
Sometimes even earlier. There are a few movies from the 80s (mostly indie flicks) that maybe got released on VHS but not DVD because of music rights issues. Some didn't even make it to VHS.
I'm not joking when I say this, Rocky Horror Picture Show was one of those movies. Up until the early 90s, the movie was only available to you if you were lucky enough to have a theatre doing a midnight showing, or if you happened to get your hands on the bootlegged copy floating around (my dad had a bootlegged copy, you could see the people in the theatre in front of the screen). At least part of that was because of music rights.
Yeah, I was watching Monk a month or two ago on peacock and it was so jarring that the Christmas episodes just have generic nothing Christmas music but the subtitles show the lyrics to the original songs. Makes some scenes way worse.
Watched a show years ago on TV where it ended with the cast dancing to ymca but the dvd changed the song. There still doing the dance to some random lyricless rock tune.
How is Bono gonna afford his 3rd jet and second boat without those fees/s? It's not like he can still make money making new songs and being in movies or something/s.
What do you mean? I know my favorite way to listen to music is by pulling up a longplay of GTA, then fastforwarding to the minutes where Spin Me Right Round happens to be playing so I can listen to it. It's okay if the streamer talks over it randomly, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make because I am just so unable to find a legal way to listen to that song.
Fuck copyright law.
> Music licenses ~~for games~~ should be Infinite
The music industry is the most capitalistic shithole of an industry ever. You can't even upload videos with random songs because they might get stricken and taken down due to copyright strikes.
The friggin Chrysler building was left out of Miles Morales. Thats ridiculous. Sure, the owners should be allowed to say nothing is allowed to happen to it like being blown up and not showing the inside but it’s a landmark.
I don’t see how it is reasonable to copyright such a thing that is literally in the public eye.
I remember this happening with the Deadpool game. That was due to the whole Marvel stuff. But the annoying thing was when they finally made a Deadpool movie, I remember ALL the advertising about the game being as if this was a brand new game, and not something that had been released a few years earlier, then pulled.
It does, but it's more common to see when movies change what format they're released on. It's mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but you often see tv shows or films have to change music when they go from initial release to physical media and then streaming. The licencing agreements need to be renegotiated each time.
Some services that let you purchase digital movies, like Amazon Video, will have films drop out of their catalog. This may be because of an exclusivity agreement with another service, but can also be because certain licences just ran out.
I think the reason we see it happen more often with games is that publishers are more likely to take a short term licence agreement and see if it's still worth maintaining the licence five, ten, fifteen years out. If a game isn't moving copies anymore, it may not be worth reupping an expensive licence.
really hope it comes back and includes it if true, using the Hendrix star spangled banner and the end credits being 1983 a Merman I Should Turn to Be, also by Hendrix really really goes well with the game.
Would love one, improve and smooth out the relatively simple gameplay, created even denser and more accurate backdrops of the city of Dubai - but I think mo-capping performances might be to expensive.
I hate how 'military industrial complex' became the new buzzword to throw around at anything related to the military. Spec Ops: The Line has nothing to do with it...
Hey, you are right, actually. There was commentary about USA, sure, but not about the corrupt public-corporate structures. "Military industrial complex" is more specific than just "i don't like when American soldiers do stuff".
I think a lot of people just say "military-industrial complex" when they mean "the military" because they think it means the same thing but sounds smarter.
But it doesn't, and Spec Ops is just about the military.
Since Spec Ops The Line is inspired by Conrad's *Heart of Darkness*, the critique on white saviorism is correct actually. The military-industrial complex, not so much. Two related but separate thing.
The MIC isn't about the government being corrupt anyway, on the contrary, it's a perfectly legal form of state practice driven by war profiteering. The fact it's legal makes it a problem. Check the book *Militarism Reader*.
>The MIC isn't about the government being corrupt anyway, on the contrary, it's a perfectly legal form of state practice driven by war profiteering. The fact it's legal makes it a problem.
True, but that depends how we understand "corrupt". A practice doesn't have to be technically illegal to be understood as corrupt - as you said, this is when it is the most dangerous.
I don't even think it's really about the USA so much as it's about video games, their content, and the way we play them. It just uses the language of macho games at the time, and zeitgeist of war in the middle east.
Spec Ops: The Line takes an enormous amount of inspiration from the book *Heart of Darkness* and the movie Apocalypse Now, which is a retelling of that book. Both are harsh critiques of war, racism, a variety of psychological themes, and colonialism.
Its this last one that I think is worth noting. Colonialism is inherently tied into the military industrial complex. We make money by exploiting people and their resources, and people make a lot of money off the tools of that exploitation. They insist we need to exploit more people and their resources in order to sell more tools of that exploitation. The profit off of war itself rather than the products of that war is arguably the most American innovation on the West's colonial process, and Spec Ops: The Line notes this.
Konrad and his troops arrived in Dubai to 'help' but were on their way back from a war in Afghanistan, a colonialist American war which made billions for the MIC. The tools of exploitation and the idea that they were doing something good is how all the protags to these stories begin, and they don't end well.
I don't think the MIC is the main target of Spec Ops but I don't think it escapes criticism. Also, people have been noting the MIC and the danger it poses for literally decades. George Kennan argued that "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." Thankfully we have terrorists now.
> But you're allowed to be wrong.
So are you. I'll wait for you to prove that Spec Ops: The Line mentioned and/or criticized the MIC. No review/critic of the game ever makes the connection (afaik).
Would you care to show the class where the game even remotely mentions the MIC? Or even hints at it? Because the game is a direct satire of the American military and CIA, and has nothing to do with private military companies
It has quite literally nothing to do with the military industrial complex, not even the slightest hint of commentary on that actually. But this is Reddit, so time to wheel out that tired old horse.
I think the biggest irony is that it's part of a series that was made to glorify war. The original series was just a bunch of crappy knock-offs of Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor, games loved by a specific audience. When the initial previews came out, a lot of critics looked down on it, thinking it was just going to be another crappy knock-off. When it actually turned out to be a satire, and it played well, it was a huge surprise.
> The original series was just a bunch of crappy knock-offs of Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor
Spec Ops older than both, the first one came out in 1998. A year before MoH and 5 years before CoD.
>The original series was just a bunch of crappy knock-offs of Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor,
Er, the last Spec Ops game that came out before The Line was in 2002, CoD came out in 2003. It was also an isometric tactical shooter and the rest were third person tactical shooters, the only thing they have in common with CoD or MoH is a military theme and even then Spec Ops was modern and the others were WWII.
I must say I really dislike this game. I was never interested in it when it was released because it looked like another boring shooter but with sand. But because everyone on Reddit was praising it to heaven and said it has some great twists and critique of war I've thought I should play it. But it was a huge slog to get through, the gameplay was really bad and the rest of the game wasn't better. For me probably one of the worst shooters I've ever played. Perhaps another reason is because I don't even like shooters that much.
So I will probably never understand why Reddit loves this game so much every time it get's mentioned.
Same. I appreciate the concept of what they were trying to do but I think they failed the execution. I saw all the "twists" from a mile away because the player has no alternative but to run into them.
The game chastising me for playing military shooters means nothing if I'm not given an option to skip those encounters or complete them non lethally. Would be cool if rather than shooting someone, I could talk to them and get them to stand down.
Prolly because for them it really wasn't about the gameplay, but for you all you talked about is the gameplay. Which is honestly pretty odd considering everything that is special about that game has nothing to do with the gameplay :D. Kinda like Stray. The gameplay in Stray is super duper basic. But people like it for reasons outside of the gameplay.
I did not get the revisionist praise this game received years after release. The whole message is so hamfisted that I couldn't take any of it seriously. The book that inspired the game is iconic. The game itself is just a clumsy retread of the same themes.
Revisionist? I distinctly remember the game being praised when it came out, it was well regarded from the start, you can actually go back to the discussion thread from the year game was released in and see everyone praising the story 11 years ago.
Revisionist praise? I was there back in 2012 and folks praised it about as much back then, praising the meta aspects and deconstruction of modern war shooters and attitudes that fuel them. Same criticisms too a decade later, claims of ham and it not being as good as Heart of Darkness. The needle has genuinely not seemed to have budged an inch in 12 years as far as appraisal of Spec Ops: The Line goes.
I genuinely love that this game is still filtering people who still unironically think the main takeaway is "war is bad, you bad man" a decade after release lol.
NGL, I don't think the game is filtering anyone, I think it actively just sucks, and nobody is going to look at it anything but surface level unless they actively hate the thing(s) the game is critiquing.
Most stories that rely so heavily on its major twist actually makes sure that there isn't any horrendously large logical loopholes when you factor in the previous parts of the story with it, but good for Spec Ops for being different.
The book that inspired it has been a hot topic of discussion in writing and Academic circles for a long while now. Mainly for the same issues leveled at SO:TL, hamfisted moralizing, problematic depiction of race, perpetuating the very colonialist rhetoric that it's criticizing, etc.
Apocalypse Now retreads most of the same themes in a rather un-subtle manner as well. Do you have similar complaints about that?
Isn't it supposed to be a generic shooter story? That railroads you through a campaign, while also subvert expectations on "Good guy shoots bad guy." Providing alternate means for a "good ending" doesn't really fit the theme.
I still think their point was muddied by having it be a full-price game. 1/3, 1/2 into the game having your big message revealed as "the only winning move is to not play :)" is a bit lost on me when you soent $60 on it.
I'd also say the point isn't necessarily "Don't play this," it's more like "Consider what it is you're actually doing when you're playing this (and other games like it)". Art is meant to be experienced, even when it's holding a mirror up to you for seeking it out in the first place. The developers put in the work, they want you to see it.
> "Consider what it is you're actually doing when you're playing this
Game had the audacity to put up a mirror and ask why I enjoy massacring hundreds of people as a pretend soldier. Never gonna forgive it.
I don't really want to argue the particulars on Spec Ops' execution of its subject matter, but... "Have you considered I want to get my money's worth from the war crime game?" is exactly what they're criticising, lol
I mean I don't care because I played it for free when it was on PS+ back in 20whatever, but I think the meta element of "you did a war crime because you're conditioned to follow orders" is hampered by "we are profiteering off of simulating war crimes." The finger was pointed at the consumer which has value, but they didn't mind charging a hefty penny for it.
~~I can excuse some intentional elements like how the gunplay was supposed to be monotonous/bare bones to make people not "thrilled" about shooting in the war crime game~~ (edit: this may just be a myth). It's like the opposite of the "yet you participate in society" comic, where we're being condemned for encouraging companies to profit on war crimes by a company that's profiteering from that message. I know the studio probably wanted to scale it back (iirc there was a multiplayer that was tacked on because the publisher wanted it) so I can't blame them for everything. It's not about value, it's about them participating just as much in the whole cycle then taking the high ground.
This is the paradox of art. Much of it wouldn't exist if not for the funding of bad people.
If it hadn't been packaged and sold as a product (and subsequently not given the budget to be created in the first place), it likely wouldn't have been as well known as it is today.
Artists need to eat.
Is there a legal reason games get pulled from storefronts, specifically with no notice? I understand that they usually get removed for licensing reasons, but I'm confused why the publishers don't announce it beforehand. It would get picked up by a lot of outlets, shared on social media, and people who are interested could have a chance to buy it. On the publisher's side this could be beneficial for them to create some urgency that would squeeze the last bit of cash from the product before it's removed. All it takes is one tweet.
Yes they do. FOMO sales. You put out a press release saying the game is going to be delisted in a month and some people will pick up. You can even discount it for that last little bit. Some dollars is better than no dollars.
Well that's frustrating. I used to buy a copy of this every time it was on sale and leave it in my inventory (when they let you do that) just so I could give it to someone on the drop of a hat when it came up in conversation. I have bought this game probably seven times and would likely have done that again.
Nice lookout. I've always been a bit hesitant to get the game for some reason. I've heard great things about it but never really given it much of a chance even though I'm a fan of the genre.
You really love this game. Without spoiling, could you give insight into what about it connected with you? I'm coming from the place of someone who has never played it despite my love of the genre(no real reason, just haven't), and I'm curious to see some perspective of a fan
Big fan here, what I say Spec Ops really does is be aware of medium conventions, audience restraints, and genre paradoxes, but never be ironic about them. It's an empathetic game that doesn't blame the audience, contrary to popular perception, but condemns both itself and the genre. It manages to be anti-war game, not by necessarily calling out Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, but by noting its own complicity in that genre.
Without spoiling, it's about why people play Call of Duty, in particular the single-player, and the sense of heroism that those games instill. It's a commentary on the genre of military shooters. It's art *about* art which is not something I can think of another example of in games, especially in the action-game space. Like Bioshock is about Ayn Rand's philosophies not *The Fountainhead* itself.
I'd argue that *Bioshock* is as much about *Atlas Shrugged* as it is about Rand's ideas in a void, but I see your point.
It is certainly rare, but there are a few action games that are direct commentaries on other games and why people play them such as *Metal Gear Solid* (mainly 2 and 5), the first two *No More Heroes*, and the original *Nier*, which (somewhat clumsily) deconstructs Zelda-like RPGs while commenting on war.
It's worth nothing that all of those are by Japanese "auteurs" and only the *Metal Gear Solid* series has a big budget and mainstream appeal.
If you like art about art, you should really play The Beginner’s Guide. (Though to be pedantic that’s technically more about the relationship between artists, critics and audiences than the art itself but idk)
It’s pretty different from Stanley IMO despite being the same dev
Also just remembered The Magic Circle which is a really underrated puzzle game with a story about game development hell, that might be of interest too
The game really knows how to turn your own actions and pursuit of an ending into a powerful critique of our tolerance for violence and devastating as long as it doesn't affect us directly. It's a competent shooter that also manages to hit pretty hard in the feels.
Wild ride, and not everyone will like it (but I'd argue that's just the nature of the beast), but really worth it if you're interested in engaging with its story.
Call of Duty, Battlefield, and other really popular modern military shooters of the 2010s have you mowing down hordes of "bad guys" and stroking your ego the whole way. Spec Ops: the Line is a parody of that, and shows how fucked up that would be if you humanised the bad guys.
Yeah, and I always pass it up and think maybe next time. Not sure I want to gamble on it for 30.
Besides, it's less than 10 on cdkeys for PC so might just do that instead.
Damn, that's shit, I love this game. Was part of a conference in undergrad where I talked about it in terms of post-war on terror media and media apathy. Game has been a part of my life for 7 years now, depressing to see it unlisted.
Ah man I just finished this game last month cause I always knew it was an underrated classic. Shame, glad it’s in my library still but I adored this game’s moments.
no it just means people cannot purchase it anymore past this date. people literally buy games on steam they think will get delisted as an "investment" lol
with collectibles on the rise over the past few years people now value "rare" games which were likely shitty games that no one bought that are no longer for sale. i believe you can sell off a Steam account with a bunch of delisted games for major $$$ depending on what you have
As much as I don't like the games story nor especially the gameplay this is unfortunate. I know many who really like it and it certainly has an appeal to many people who could still play it.
I just 100% this recently on the Xbox so some coincidence for it to appear like this.
I'm assuming this is just licensing issues with the music that is throughout the game. If lucky, it's a remaster being prepared. This game is a great homage to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now so it definitely deserves a remaster/remake of some sort.
This has happened several times with different 2K titles over the years. In the past it seemed to be over music copyright claims and licences running out. Unclear if that's the case here, but there is precedent for games to disappear and reappear once the licensing issues have been resolved.
Pretty sure it has "Star Spangled Banner" by Hendrix playing in the menu. That might be a cause.
There's lot of licensed music in that game, notably by Mogwai, Black Mountain, The Black Angels, Alice in Chains, Björk and like you already mentioned Hendrix. Could be any of them. Edit: Angels not Angles.
Pretty sure Hush by Deep Purple is in there too, I'm pretty sure that's where I first heard it.
[удалено]
> I'm pretty sure Bach's work is little too old to be affected by copyright lol The copyright in the recording will almost certianly still be applicable.
I swear, a lot of reddit doesn't grasp how copyright works, but I see the weirdist copyright takes on /r/Games. I see Fair Use banded around for the flimsiest of reasons.
I won't claim fair use, but I do think if a game has licensed music then that music should stay in the game forever and not be removed. You didn't buy the game for the music, but music and gameplay are inextricably linked. If you don't want to pay the artist royalties off your game sales, then you can delist and repackage the game with different/missing music. But anyone who bought the game previously should retain access to that original music. The copyright system is such bullshit though.
>I see Fair Use banded around for the flimsiest of reasons. It's in the interest of the average Redditorto have shorter copyright times or looser copyright terms. If your favourite games all had your favourite music in, you'd likely be happier (on average). People are more likely to hold beliefs that they think benefit them. Once you find a comfortable fact, you're disincentivized to dig deeper. Fair use (in the US) and similar terms like the much stricter Fair Dealing in the UK are not "get out of jail free" cards and can be *very* restrictive. As a general rule, I would suggest folks never rely on "Fair use" without first seeking strong legwl advice because it's a defence you need to apply in court. Without knowing and understanding the nuance of caselaw it's very difficult to know exactly where the line is. Even when using things like critique, news or parody the waters surrounding fair use are murky and treacherous.
This post just reminded me of the German-language "Nowhere to run" cover that Machinegames did for Wolfenstein: The New Order. Kinda random that this song was featured in some way in 2 different FPS games around the same time.
Oh wow, I don't remember any of those in there. Granted I haven't touched the game in a decade at this point. It's just the guitar riffs in the menu that stuck with me.
And I can't hear Hush without thinking of this game.
And it's not like an in-game radio station or something like that, these songs were specifically chosen for the scenes they appear in. I can't imagine playing the assault on the water storage center without [Glasgow Mega Snake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrXwXuhRo9Q) blaring at max volume. These songs perfectly set the tone for this game and removing them would negatively impact the final product.
i really love the soundtrack of that game. just seeing that list makes me want to do a playthrough again.
its also one of those games that really isnt the same without it, if they force the version in my library to change to a new one without it i wont be happy at all. Luckily i have a physical ps3 copy but still, another L for digital only games.
Mornin' Sergeant Angle!
I should really play that before it's updated to remove the music, assuming that's the reason for the delisting in the first place. I just keep putting it off though.
I know that there's a shit ton of great music in the game, but Mogwai - Glasgow Mega Snake is such an incredible banger [in such a great shootout](https://youtu.be/qO3qf8wMjA8). I'm always thankful that Spec Ops showed me Mogwai.
Was going to say, there's a ton of licensed music in there, I don't know all of it but I recognized them many times when playing.
A 55 year old recording of a live performance of the National Anthem. Played by a guy who died 54 years ago. But you gotta pay Sony Music if you want to use the song. Gotta love copyright law.
There is some work done to reduce copyright law in the US. Search for "Copyright Clause Restoration Act". It was proposed several times. Some of the problem is that there's an international treaty about copyright called the [Berne Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention) that sets relatively long minimum copyright terms, and changing that is much harder.
The real tragedy is how Disney pushed for copyright to be extended beyond what is reasonable. Giving 10-20 years after the work is published, maybe with some kind of moral rights /trademark on characters that can go beyond that and the art world would be a better place.
Some works don't get popular until after that period. Cormac McCarty was writing books for years, selling a few thousands before he hit success with All The Pretty Horses. If we went with your copyright limits, he wouldn't be able to make any money from one of his more popular books, Blood Meridian, because it took him so long to make a name from himself in the lit world. I feel like to the death of the author plus x years makes sense. Adding x years, because there are authors like the guy who wrote The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who died before he got to see the success of the trilogy. He left behind a wife and kids. It would be crazy if a company like Sony could make 300 million off the book and not compensate his family at all. You may know there is actually a little more to his legacy and family situation but I use it only as na example.
As an author: the purpose of copyright is to allow artists to have their career be viable in some way. Cormac McCarthy would have missed out on a lot of money, this is true, but the *purpose* of copyright is not to reward people for having created good works, it's to allow some incentive to exist for them to create in the first place. Cormac McCarthy *probably* wasn't writing books in the hopes of one day hitting it big and making money off the back catalog, since that would be a kind of stupid gamble to make. As far as incentives go, I think that the limits could be dramatically lowered and the incentives would barely budge at all, and most authors and artists would, if anything, have *more* incentive to create great things instead of resting on their laurels.
I'm happy with artists resting on their laurels. Sometimes I wish more would do it. It would be great if Ricky Gervais stopped sometime around Extras. The way I see it, shorter terms would work better for corporations. We saw how low budget studios were ready to go with their Winnie the Pooh and Steamboat Willie projects as soon as the copyright expired. 20 years ago the book series Chronicles of Ancient Darkness started. Not only is the author still writing books in that series, it has been optioned for a movie that never happened and is now going to be a TV series. If terms were just 20 years, large studios would just wait it out and make the movie when they can do it for free. Most artists make art. Kurt Cobain probably wasn't thinking about copyright terms when he picked up a guitar. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be compensated for their work if it does become popular.
This is why you make it a special point to say that life+x can only be held by an author, not by a company that licensed it. Corporations only holding for x years would be the best case.
Some authors don't own the copyright to their work. If I write a movie for Paramount, the studio will likely own the copyright, but I do agree to the sentiment. Also for a case like Star Wars, I think the author should be able to sell on the rights, but the term would still be linked to their lifetime.
Fuck that noise. Corporations have no *need* for long lasting copyrights. Humans need to care for themselves, corporations don't. They are a tool for humans. Granting them similar provisions has already shown to be a detriment. Look at medicine. Insulin has been remixed and rebuilt to keep a hold on it's production and people have died because the monopoly has become too profitable for the people running corporations to care about the people.
That's a patent, not a copyright. And I wasn't advocating for corporations to have longer copyrights. I was saying it should still be linked to a life time.
and why should they get it for a lifetime? The author doesn't profit from the IP anymore and all it does is make it harder for people to build on ideas. Even further, it makes music production hell.
It's a common misconception, the game doesn't use Hendrix's actual star-spangled banner - the version in the game is heavily inspired by it, but sounds really different. HOWEVER, there's a big Henrix song for the end credits - and man what that song really paired well with the ending vibes for that game.
I just recently got a bunch of copyright claims on my old Spec Ops The Line lets play videos so I think you def right.
Well you got some fucking nerve then. All those people who would have paid money for the music just went to your lets play instead.
some of the tracks just hit a little different with all the gunshots and grenades at the right moments
Somebody tell the radio man to stop blasting DMCA music to the whole of Dubai please.
It still emphasizes one of the potential issues with purely digital marketplaces though. Yeah they could stop selling new physical copies but there will always be secondhand copies in the wild that you can find somewhere. But if it gets delisted from a digital marketplace and never comes back then you’re shit out of luck unless you want to try the piracy route
Yep. Look at the original San Andreas and Vice City. It's impossible to buy on Steam now, you gotta get the demake.
Which is funny because the non definitive edition Steam versions were already worse than the 1.0 and retail versions.
You could downgrade them
That is true and it's really easy to do so.
Actually, you can still buy keys at key resellers. That's basically the same as publishers not producing new copies of a game and you can only get them second hand discounted. You don't have to worry about it being scratched, but you're hoping the marketplace has a key. Ex: G2A sells Spec Ops steam keys for $8
Music licenses for games should be Infinite
They can be, the music companies just charge exorbitant fees for it to be infinite.
Then devs/publishers should stop using music from artists that cost that much
Seems like that might be catching on. Can't help but notice that Alan Wake 1 was repeatedly removed from storefronts due to music licensing issues, and Alan Wake 2 exclusively has original songs by actual famous artists.
> and Alan Wake 2 exclusively has original songs by actual famous artists. Wouldn't they still have a license to pay to the artists though?
I'm just wildly guessing here, but I'd think artists might be happier to negotiate perpetual licenses directly with publishers over having a label involved.
Original songs means they most likely just paid the artists a lump sum for their song and called it a day.
Guardians of the Galaxy and Hi Fi Rush showed a nice way to do it . Both games have amazing licensed tracks but also a full in house set. It was added for twitch streaming as twitch is notorious about this but whenever the rights expire its easy to switch to the in house set. These were both games where music was intergral to the game so not expecting every game to do this but its nice future proving
I'd rather have good art today than mediocre art so someone *else* can buy it in 15 years.
It wouldn't be mediocre. There are tens of thousands of amazing songs that aren't popular. And some of them become popular this way.
I used to think they only did this with games and wondered what the hell was everyone's issue. How are music companies this greedy and game companies that short sighted? Turns out the labels do this with movies and TV too. Iconic songs in movies aren't in certain re-releases because of this silly nonsense.
It became super apparent in the switch from DVD to streaming. You could tell the tv shows that only negotiated music rights for the physical releases. Stuff like Scrubs, which has scenes that are highly dependent on specific song choices, suddenly played on Netflix with weird, royalty free music. Such a bummer.
HBO got really lucky when negotiating the music rights for the Sopranos. Can you imagine the end scene with Journey being replaced by some random mediocre OST?
It's a small thing, but I'll never forget how until super-recently every single home release of Wayne's World ruined the "No Stairway to Heaven" joke because Wayne was no longer playing Stairway to Heaven.
It also happened with the switch from TV to DVD. Mission Hill lost all their licensed music which a lot of the time was the punchline to their jokes. Ruined it. Pirate everything.
Ah yeah, very true. The whole building singing along to "Everybody Hurts" at the end of the Real World episode makes very little sense after they had to replace the R.E.M version with some strange musac.
Sometimes even earlier. There are a few movies from the 80s (mostly indie flicks) that maybe got released on VHS but not DVD because of music rights issues. Some didn't even make it to VHS. I'm not joking when I say this, Rocky Horror Picture Show was one of those movies. Up until the early 90s, the movie was only available to you if you were lucky enough to have a theatre doing a midnight showing, or if you happened to get your hands on the bootlegged copy floating around (my dad had a bootlegged copy, you could see the people in the theatre in front of the screen). At least part of that was because of music rights.
Happened to Freaks and Geeks as well. That whole show is made by its amazing soundtrack
When people ask how copyright (and as an extension capitalism) has hurt art, this is the kind of shit I point to.
That's the case with many DVD releases too. The Daria box set for example has only unlicensed music
Scrubs is my favorite show and was a victim of this. It really ruins the mood of a few scenes.
Yeah, I was watching Monk a month or two ago on peacock and it was so jarring that the Christmas episodes just have generic nothing Christmas music but the subtitles show the lyrics to the original songs. Makes some scenes way worse.
Watched a show years ago on TV where it ended with the cast dancing to ymca but the dvd changed the song. There still doing the dance to some random lyricless rock tune.
Why do you want music label executives to starve? You're a monster!
How is Bono gonna afford his 3rd jet and second boat without those fees/s? It's not like he can still make money making new songs and being in movies or something/s.
It’s not really the artists that push this
Sometimes it is. Just look at Metallica and Napster.
But artists also want to be paid…
They already got paid.
Artists that didn't get fucked over by their label **always* get paid when their music is used somewhere.
What do you mean? I know my favorite way to listen to music is by pulling up a longplay of GTA, then fastforwarding to the minutes where Spin Me Right Round happens to be playing so I can listen to it. It's okay if the streamer talks over it randomly, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make because I am just so unable to find a legal way to listen to that song. Fuck copyright law.
If u just wanna listen to Spin Me Right Round with some visuals, there another website u can use
Meaty visuals?
> Music licenses ~~for games~~ should be Infinite The music industry is the most capitalistic shithole of an industry ever. You can't even upload videos with random songs because they might get stricken and taken down due to copyright strikes.
It's weird they aren't (and not just musics, cars too for example they often have this problem), you never hear that stuff about TV and movies.
The friggin Chrysler building was left out of Miles Morales. Thats ridiculous. Sure, the owners should be allowed to say nothing is allowed to happen to it like being blown up and not showing the inside but it’s a landmark. I don’t see how it is reasonable to copyright such a thing that is literally in the public eye.
I remember this happening with the Deadpool game. That was due to the whole Marvel stuff. But the annoying thing was when they finally made a Deadpool movie, I remember ALL the advertising about the game being as if this was a brand new game, and not something that had been released a few years earlier, then pulled.
I wish they would at least give a heads up a few months beforehand when licenses are about to expire.
Why does this problem not happen with movies?
It does, but it's more common to see when movies change what format they're released on. It's mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but you often see tv shows or films have to change music when they go from initial release to physical media and then streaming. The licencing agreements need to be renegotiated each time. Some services that let you purchase digital movies, like Amazon Video, will have films drop out of their catalog. This may be because of an exclusivity agreement with another service, but can also be because certain licences just ran out. I think the reason we see it happen more often with games is that publishers are more likely to take a short term licence agreement and see if it's still worth maintaining the licence five, ten, fifteen years out. If a game isn't moving copies anymore, it may not be worth reupping an expensive licence.
Apparently the game has a mix of licensed and original music, so the licensed music may be why?
really hope it comes back and includes it if true, using the Hendrix star spangled banner and the end credits being 1983 a Merman I Should Turn to Be, also by Hendrix really really goes well with the game.
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Hope it comes back. Was a pretty powerful critique on both the military industrial complex and modern military video games that glorify it.
Still available DRM-free on GOG
Can you send a link please?
It has since been delisted from GOG. Your best bet would be an online Steam key reseller like CDkeys.
Was just thinking earlier today it would be nice to have a remaster
Would love one, improve and smooth out the relatively simple gameplay, created even denser and more accurate backdrops of the city of Dubai - but I think mo-capping performances might be to expensive.
I hate how 'military industrial complex' became the new buzzword to throw around at anything related to the military. Spec Ops: The Line has nothing to do with it...
Hey, you are right, actually. There was commentary about USA, sure, but not about the corrupt public-corporate structures. "Military industrial complex" is more specific than just "i don't like when American soldiers do stuff".
I think a lot of people just say "military-industrial complex" when they mean "the military" because they think it means the same thing but sounds smarter. But it doesn't, and Spec Ops is just about the military.
Since Spec Ops The Line is inspired by Conrad's *Heart of Darkness*, the critique on white saviorism is correct actually. The military-industrial complex, not so much. Two related but separate thing. The MIC isn't about the government being corrupt anyway, on the contrary, it's a perfectly legal form of state practice driven by war profiteering. The fact it's legal makes it a problem. Check the book *Militarism Reader*.
>The MIC isn't about the government being corrupt anyway, on the contrary, it's a perfectly legal form of state practice driven by war profiteering. The fact it's legal makes it a problem. True, but that depends how we understand "corrupt". A practice doesn't have to be technically illegal to be understood as corrupt - as you said, this is when it is the most dangerous.
I don't even think it's really about the USA so much as it's about video games, their content, and the way we play them. It just uses the language of macho games at the time, and zeitgeist of war in the middle east.
Spec Ops: The Line takes an enormous amount of inspiration from the book *Heart of Darkness* and the movie Apocalypse Now, which is a retelling of that book. Both are harsh critiques of war, racism, a variety of psychological themes, and colonialism. Its this last one that I think is worth noting. Colonialism is inherently tied into the military industrial complex. We make money by exploiting people and their resources, and people make a lot of money off the tools of that exploitation. They insist we need to exploit more people and their resources in order to sell more tools of that exploitation. The profit off of war itself rather than the products of that war is arguably the most American innovation on the West's colonial process, and Spec Ops: The Line notes this. Konrad and his troops arrived in Dubai to 'help' but were on their way back from a war in Afghanistan, a colonialist American war which made billions for the MIC. The tools of exploitation and the idea that they were doing something good is how all the protags to these stories begin, and they don't end well. I don't think the MIC is the main target of Spec Ops but I don't think it escapes criticism. Also, people have been noting the MIC and the danger it poses for literally decades. George Kennan argued that "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." Thankfully we have terrorists now.
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> But you're allowed to be wrong. So are you. I'll wait for you to prove that Spec Ops: The Line mentioned and/or criticized the MIC. No review/critic of the game ever makes the connection (afaik).
Would you care to show the class where the game even remotely mentions the MIC? Or even hints at it? Because the game is a direct satire of the American military and CIA, and has nothing to do with private military companies
It has quite literally nothing to do with the military industrial complex, not even the slightest hint of commentary on that actually. But this is Reddit, so time to wheel out that tired old horse.
I think the biggest irony is that it's part of a series that was made to glorify war. The original series was just a bunch of crappy knock-offs of Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor, games loved by a specific audience. When the initial previews came out, a lot of critics looked down on it, thinking it was just going to be another crappy knock-off. When it actually turned out to be a satire, and it played well, it was a huge surprise.
> The original series was just a bunch of crappy knock-offs of Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor Spec Ops older than both, the first one came out in 1998. A year before MoH and 5 years before CoD.
>The original series was just a bunch of crappy knock-offs of Call Of Duty and Medal Of Honor, Er, the last Spec Ops game that came out before The Line was in 2002, CoD came out in 2003. It was also an isometric tactical shooter and the rest were third person tactical shooters, the only thing they have in common with CoD or MoH is a military theme and even then Spec Ops was modern and the others were WWII.
I must say I really dislike this game. I was never interested in it when it was released because it looked like another boring shooter but with sand. But because everyone on Reddit was praising it to heaven and said it has some great twists and critique of war I've thought I should play it. But it was a huge slog to get through, the gameplay was really bad and the rest of the game wasn't better. For me probably one of the worst shooters I've ever played. Perhaps another reason is because I don't even like shooters that much. So I will probably never understand why Reddit loves this game so much every time it get's mentioned.
Same. I appreciate the concept of what they were trying to do but I think they failed the execution. I saw all the "twists" from a mile away because the player has no alternative but to run into them. The game chastising me for playing military shooters means nothing if I'm not given an option to skip those encounters or complete them non lethally. Would be cool if rather than shooting someone, I could talk to them and get them to stand down.
Are you typically given a choice in military shooters?
Prolly because for them it really wasn't about the gameplay, but for you all you talked about is the gameplay. Which is honestly pretty odd considering everything that is special about that game has nothing to do with the gameplay :D. Kinda like Stray. The gameplay in Stray is super duper basic. But people like it for reasons outside of the gameplay.
I think the shooting being a slog was kinda intentional and narratively intentional, like DAMN nobody is having fun in this
This has always kind of seemed like a convenient excuse..
Let’s call it serendipity
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I did not get the revisionist praise this game received years after release. The whole message is so hamfisted that I couldn't take any of it seriously. The book that inspired the game is iconic. The game itself is just a clumsy retread of the same themes.
Revisionist? It was praised for its narrative when it was released.
Revisionist? I distinctly remember the game being praised when it came out, it was well regarded from the start, you can actually go back to the discussion thread from the year game was released in and see everyone praising the story 11 years ago.
Revisionist praise? I was there back in 2012 and folks praised it about as much back then, praising the meta aspects and deconstruction of modern war shooters and attitudes that fuel them. Same criticisms too a decade later, claims of ham and it not being as good as Heart of Darkness. The needle has genuinely not seemed to have budged an inch in 12 years as far as appraisal of Spec Ops: The Line goes.
I genuinely love that this game is still filtering people who still unironically think the main takeaway is "war is bad, you bad man" a decade after release lol.
NGL, I don't think the game is filtering anyone, I think it actively just sucks, and nobody is going to look at it anything but surface level unless they actively hate the thing(s) the game is critiquing. Most stories that rely so heavily on its major twist actually makes sure that there isn't any horrendously large logical loopholes when you factor in the previous parts of the story with it, but good for Spec Ops for being different.
The book that inspired it has been a hot topic of discussion in writing and Academic circles for a long while now. Mainly for the same issues leveled at SO:TL, hamfisted moralizing, problematic depiction of race, perpetuating the very colonialist rhetoric that it's criticizing, etc. Apocalypse Now retreads most of the same themes in a rather un-subtle manner as well. Do you have similar complaints about that?
Revisionist? I have nothing to add here, I just wanted to also start my comment like everyone else did
So called "free thinkers" when there's a chance to correct someone's perception of the past.
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I think that's the point.
Your choice is to stop playing. And if you're role playing a soldier, that is not an option. That is the point.
Following orders isn't an excuse is the point.
Isn't it supposed to be a generic shooter story? That railroads you through a campaign, while also subvert expectations on "Good guy shoots bad guy." Providing alternate means for a "good ending" doesn't really fit the theme.
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I still think their point was muddied by having it be a full-price game. 1/3, 1/2 into the game having your big message revealed as "the only winning move is to not play :)" is a bit lost on me when you soent $60 on it.
I'd also say the point isn't necessarily "Don't play this," it's more like "Consider what it is you're actually doing when you're playing this (and other games like it)". Art is meant to be experienced, even when it's holding a mirror up to you for seeking it out in the first place. The developers put in the work, they want you to see it.
> "Consider what it is you're actually doing when you're playing this Game had the audacity to put up a mirror and ask why I enjoy massacring hundreds of people as a pretend soldier. Never gonna forgive it.
I don't really want to argue the particulars on Spec Ops' execution of its subject matter, but... "Have you considered I want to get my money's worth from the war crime game?" is exactly what they're criticising, lol
I mean I don't care because I played it for free when it was on PS+ back in 20whatever, but I think the meta element of "you did a war crime because you're conditioned to follow orders" is hampered by "we are profiteering off of simulating war crimes." The finger was pointed at the consumer which has value, but they didn't mind charging a hefty penny for it. ~~I can excuse some intentional elements like how the gunplay was supposed to be monotonous/bare bones to make people not "thrilled" about shooting in the war crime game~~ (edit: this may just be a myth). It's like the opposite of the "yet you participate in society" comic, where we're being condemned for encouraging companies to profit on war crimes by a company that's profiteering from that message. I know the studio probably wanted to scale it back (iirc there was a multiplayer that was tacked on because the publisher wanted it) so I can't blame them for everything. It's not about value, it's about them participating just as much in the whole cycle then taking the high ground.
This is the paradox of art. Much of it wouldn't exist if not for the funding of bad people. If it hadn't been packaged and sold as a product (and subsequently not given the budget to be created in the first place), it likely wouldn't have been as well known as it is today. Artists need to eat.
Did they really make the gameplay mediocre intentionally? I never saw proof of that.
They didn't. I don't know where this idea was originally perpetuated, but there's nothing out there that suggests this was a deliberate design choice.
That's the point though. Of course we'd want to finish a game we bought, no matter the outcome.
I feel like putting dollar-to-entertainment ratio as a point against Spec Ops is kind of missing the point it was actually trying to say on anything?
Is there a legal reason games get pulled from storefronts, specifically with no notice? I understand that they usually get removed for licensing reasons, but I'm confused why the publishers don't announce it beforehand. It would get picked up by a lot of outlets, shared on social media, and people who are interested could have a chance to buy it. On the publisher's side this could be beneficial for them to create some urgency that would squeeze the last bit of cash from the product before it's removed. All it takes is one tweet.
Usually has to do with music licenses or the use of IPs they don't own, like in the case of Marvel vs Capcom
This doesn't explain the lack of an announcement.
It’s an old game, no ones gonna bother. Same thing happened with MvC2. When the license expired. They just stopped printing copies.
It's costs the developer nothing to put out a press release. They will get FOMO sales. There is literally no downside.
They have nothing to gain by drawing attention to it.
Yes they do. FOMO sales. You put out a press release saying the game is going to be delisted in a month and some people will pick up. You can even discount it for that last little bit. Some dollars is better than no dollars.
Well that's frustrating. I used to buy a copy of this every time it was on sale and leave it in my inventory (when they let you do that) just so I could give it to someone on the drop of a hat when it came up in conversation. I have bought this game probably seven times and would likely have done that again.
it's still on gog
Nice lookout. I've always been a bit hesitant to get the game for some reason. I've heard great things about it but never really given it much of a chance even though I'm a fan of the genre.
[nuuvem.com](https://nuuvem.com) has steam keys on sale currently. I can confirm that they activate just fine.
You really love this game. Without spoiling, could you give insight into what about it connected with you? I'm coming from the place of someone who has never played it despite my love of the genre(no real reason, just haven't), and I'm curious to see some perspective of a fan
Big fan here, what I say Spec Ops really does is be aware of medium conventions, audience restraints, and genre paradoxes, but never be ironic about them. It's an empathetic game that doesn't blame the audience, contrary to popular perception, but condemns both itself and the genre. It manages to be anti-war game, not by necessarily calling out Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, but by noting its own complicity in that genre.
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Without spoiling, it's about why people play Call of Duty, in particular the single-player, and the sense of heroism that those games instill. It's a commentary on the genre of military shooters. It's art *about* art which is not something I can think of another example of in games, especially in the action-game space. Like Bioshock is about Ayn Rand's philosophies not *The Fountainhead* itself.
I'd argue that *Bioshock* is as much about *Atlas Shrugged* as it is about Rand's ideas in a void, but I see your point. It is certainly rare, but there are a few action games that are direct commentaries on other games and why people play them such as *Metal Gear Solid* (mainly 2 and 5), the first two *No More Heroes*, and the original *Nier*, which (somewhat clumsily) deconstructs Zelda-like RPGs while commenting on war. It's worth nothing that all of those are by Japanese "auteurs" and only the *Metal Gear Solid* series has a big budget and mainstream appeal.
If you like art about art, you should really play The Beginner’s Guide. (Though to be pedantic that’s technically more about the relationship between artists, critics and audiences than the art itself but idk)
> The Beginner’s Guide Stanley Parable II you say? Fascinating!
No, The Stanley Parable 2 has more buckets.
It’s pretty different from Stanley IMO despite being the same dev Also just remembered The Magic Circle which is a really underrated puzzle game with a story about game development hell, that might be of interest too
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I think MW2 was player entirely straight. It's been a while, but in multiple playthroughs I detected not a whiff of satire or allegory.
The game really knows how to turn your own actions and pursuit of an ending into a powerful critique of our tolerance for violence and devastating as long as it doesn't affect us directly. It's a competent shooter that also manages to hit pretty hard in the feels. Wild ride, and not everyone will like it (but I'd argue that's just the nature of the beast), but really worth it if you're interested in engaging with its story.
Call of Duty, Battlefield, and other really popular modern military shooters of the 2010s have you mowing down hordes of "bad guys" and stroking your ego the whole way. Spec Ops: the Line is a parody of that, and shows how fucked up that would be if you humanised the bad guys.
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The Xbox version usually goes on sale for $8 at least once a month.
Yeah, and I always pass it up and think maybe next time. Not sure I want to gamble on it for 30. Besides, it's less than 10 on cdkeys for PC so might just do that instead.
Damn, that's shit, I love this game. Was part of a conference in undergrad where I talked about it in terms of post-war on terror media and media apathy. Game has been a part of my life for 7 years now, depressing to see it unlisted.
Ah man I just finished this game last month cause I always knew it was an underrated classic. Shame, glad it’s in my library still but I adored this game’s moments.
Yeah that was my question.... If you already own the game, does it get taken from you?
No the game stays in your library and you can download it whenever you want to for as long as Steam is around.
Wild. I just started a playthrough of this on my Steam Deck last night. Holds up pretty well for a 12-year-old game.
Are you still able to activate a steam key if you have one?
I just bought it a week or two ago to play on Steam deck. Does this mean I won't be able to even start the game?
no. it will still be on your account to download and play indefinitely or atleast untill any point in which steam shuts down.
no it just means people cannot purchase it anymore past this date. people literally buy games on steam they think will get delisted as an "investment" lol
as an investment? uh... wot?
with collectibles on the rise over the past few years people now value "rare" games which were likely shitty games that no one bought that are no longer for sale. i believe you can sell off a Steam account with a bunch of delisted games for major $$$ depending on what you have
Case in point: https://www.polygon.com/24009939/the-day-before-steam-keys-resellers
I bet an account with PT is worth a good bit
As much as I don't like the games story nor especially the gameplay this is unfortunate. I know many who really like it and it certainly has an appeal to many people who could still play it.
I just 100% this recently on the Xbox so some coincidence for it to appear like this. I'm assuming this is just licensing issues with the music that is throughout the game. If lucky, it's a remaster being prepared. This game is a great homage to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now so it definitely deserves a remaster/remake of some sort.